Care home bosses who lost residents during the coronavirus pandemic have spoken out after messages sent by former Health Secretary Matt Hancock were leaked this week.
The texts allege that Mr Hancock did not accept advice from Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty that there should be testing for “all going into care homes” in April 2020.
While Mr Hancock fiercely disputes that he ignored clinical guidance, care home boss Sue Cawthray said his decision had "a terrible impact on so many people" during the pandemic - and now.
Bosses John Godden and Mike Padgham, and Amos Waldman, whose grandmother died during the pandemic, have spoken to The Mirror after the messages were leaked.
'No integrity'
Sue Cawthray, 66, runs a residential care home in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. She says the revelations confirm her views of the former Health Secretary - as a man of ‘no integrity’ whose decisions cost the lives of a colleague and residents.
“I couldn’t even read the news at first because reading about him makes me unwell,” she says. “The messages say it all - once you write something down you can’t deny it.
“The tone is almost flippant. It has disgusted and upset me and so many of us who had to work through that awful time.
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“His decisions have had a terrible impact on so many people - now and then.
“He clearly didn’t value the lives of vulnerable people, they weren’t deemed worthy of being protected. Just as staff weren’t worthy of being given the right PPE.
“Early on in the pandemic we lost 11 residents and a very dear friend and colleague - I had to watch his funeral online.
“Carers and their families suffered terribly during those days - we still are suffering, we can never get those days back, and now we’re having problems attracting and retaining staff because of how the sector was treated.
“When I saw he was going on that TV show it said it all. The sheer arrogance of the man was breathtaking.
“The man has no integrity.
“He should be taking responsibility for what he did. We can’t bring the people we lost back but he has to be held accountable.”
'It was a battle'
John Godden is CEO of Salutem Healthcare which has more than 150 care and special needs services across the country. He explains the leaked messages which allege Matt Hancock ignored advice on testing people entering care homes are a step towards accountability.
“This mistruth that there was a protective ring around care homes has been pretty widely undone,” he says. “Now we can actually have a conversation without a counter voice saying they did it, when they didn’t. Now we can have a debate so we are able to do better next time.”
The care boss explains that from the very start of the pandemic, it was accepted that clinically vulnerable people were more susceptible to suffering bad outcomes from covid. “It was no secret, but what wasn’t reflected in any government strategy or policy was any action and recognition of that fact,” says John. “Pushing people out of hospitals into care settings was creating abject fear amongst the residents and our staff.
“We and other care organisations did everything we could to resist that but it was a battle. We were battling government policy and to be told the government policy was protecting us was really grating. Shifting people from hospital settings, which were demonstrably at the core of things and therefore unsafe, into care homes was a stupid policy because all you’re doing is making matters worse.”
'Lots of people were dying'
Mike Padgham is managing director of Saint Cecilia’s Care Group, which owns five care homes in North Yorkshire. He thinks the news that Matt Hancock allegedly ignored advice from Professor Chris Whitty to provide testing is just bizarre.
“In the early days, even a non-expert could see what was happening in care homes in Europe. Lots of people were dying so it seems pretty common sense that the virus could come into homes via hospitals or in the community,” he says.
Mike believes that care homes were under-supported from the start. “We locked down earlier than the government said because we could see what was coming and I remember those days when care home staff had inadequate PPE because it all went to the health service first, and we were worried about what we’re not being told,” he says. “I remember ambulances coming to the home and they’d be wearing full protective clothing. And our staff would be saying, ‘What is it that we’re not been told? We’ve got nothing really’.
“I don’t think any lessons have been learned from a campaign perspective, because we still feel second class the NHS. I hope the public inquiry gets a move on,” he says. “I would hope that the latest revelations today give a bit more impetus to get things concluded so we can really find out what happened to prevent this from happening again.”
'I felt angry and sick'
In March 2020, Amos Waldman’s grandmother Sheila Lamb moved herself into a care home in North London on a trial basis.
But Sheila, 94, never had the opportunity to return to her own house, as she passed away on April 2 after contracting Covid.
“I do think if testing had been done earlier in care homes it may have been different,” says Amos, 43, a barrister living in Stockport, Greater Manchester.
“By March there had been plenty of warnings from organisations such as WHO and SAGE, so the testing should have been implemented by then.”
Amos, a member of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaigning group, says seeing Matt Hancock’s leaked Whatsapp messages show the former Health Secretary was more concerned about his ego than protecting people’s lives.
He adds: “I felt angry and sick when I saw the messages. It evokes all those memories that we had at the time, we knew that the government wasn’t following the science but they kept on saying they were.
“The messages seem to suggest that Matt Hancock was more focused on hitting the 100,000-a-day target than protecting the most vulnerable people in society - and it hurts.
“We hope lessons are learned from this and no other family will go through what we’ve been through. I was very close to my grandmother and she is deeply missed.”
